The seemingly-playful concept perpetuates the idea of men having a right to women's bodies.

The idea that a platonic friendship between two people can’t exist without one party being crushed under the weight of unrequited #feels is well established in pop culture—where the couple being portrayed are usually heterosexuals of the opposite sex.

“Aw dude, I’m stuck in the friend zone :(“ a bro will say, thus gaining the sympathy of all his other on-screen bros. But it’s not just used in TV land. “Friend zone” is a universally referenced dilemma, where the implication seems to be that as a man, you’re entitled to sex, and to relationships. And if a woman doesn’t want to have sex and/or a relationship with you, well then, that’s just unjust and cruel. How dare she have opinions about who she’s attracted to!

Enter David Slack, the TV writer behind Teen Titans’ Beast Boy and Terra, according to Mashable. After his characters were used in another “LOLOL friend zone, amirite?” display of male bonding on Twitter, Slack. Went. In.

"Hi. I wrote two of these characters,” he tweeted. “I hope you someday learn what Beast Boy already knew: That women are actually people," David wrote. But he didn’t stop there. What followed was a full on sledging of the very idea that women owe men something sexually. Slack even made the link between attitudes the “friend zone” belies and violence against women, writing "It might help to consider that some spurned men become a stalkers & attackers. Reinforcing the myth of the friend zone emboldens them."

Read it and weep at the allyship :')

Hi. I wrote two of these characters. I hope you someday learn what Beast Boy already knew: that women are actually people...